If you are a local TV viewer in Birmingham, Alabama, trying to figure out what just happened to your local news station, you are not alone. Meanwhile, WIAT was left holding the bag as an independent, waiting to eventually absorb lower-tier CW programming. In the high-stakes chess match of retransmission fees, network affiliate agreements, and bottom-line margin squeezing, local viewers and local journalists are nothing more than collateral damage. While corporate suits in Texas count their bonuses, the viewers in Birmingham are left bewildered, watching a once-respected local station get run into the ground by absentee ownership. Nexstar gets its profit margins, network executives get their deal terms, and the people of Birmingham are left asking where their actual local news went.